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When Selecting A Domain Name, Think Big |
By:
Brandon Drury |
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While, it can be important to fill a nitch with your domain
name, it may be more important to choose a domain name that will
allow you to expand in the future. I've created a number of
websites where I was shortsighted at first and later regretted
it.
You've had an idea for a website for a long time and you finally
have the time to start building it. You are serious and you
intend to build a website that will be filled with content for
your visitors. You want this to be a website of real value. You
actually want to people to get something out of your site and in
exchange you would like to make a few bucks. This seams like a
fair deal.
Niche vs Everything The beauty of the way a website / domain
works is it's versatility. You could have a very broad domain
name and still cover niche topics via the use of subdirectories.
Let's say you want to create a mainstream music site. You could
go with mainstreammusic.com or something similar, but would this
be too limiting? If your music site takes off, you may find
other things that your target demographic is into. For example,
I'd guess that the mainstream music crowd is typically under
14-25 years old, give or take. What else to 14-25 year old
people like to purchase besides music? You could be getting
affiliate commissions off of blue jeans, perfume, McDonalds (I'm
not sure about that one), etc. By limiting your site to just
music, you are missing out on a large chunk of visitors.
Getting Started In the beginning, you must focus on your niche.
In fact, it's critical. If you spread yourself too thin too
fast, you'll be in trouble. So focus on whatever it is that you
are doing, but keep the future in mind. Take "Baby Steps" from
"What About Bob?". Start small. After you conquer your music
subdirectory, you can then create your fashion subdirectory, but
not until then. Launching a fashion portion of your large site
will be much easier. You will already have traffic coming to
your site. Members of the forum will automatically see it and
visit it. You'll get a boost right off the bat. Then when you
start your comedy subdirectory, just think how easy it will be
to get that going. You already have two fully function websites
(but under subdirectories) One mass email to your members and
you'll get big time traffic the first day.
The Advantages of Big Websites Here's more food for thought.
Would you rather have one hundred websites that all fulfill one
niche or would you rather have one astronomical website that has
one hundred niche subdirectories inside itz/ The laws of synergy
kick in. Your site will be much more successful if you can house
anything under one roof, or in this case one domain. Users only
have to join one forum or one mailing list to use everything in
your site. You can still cater to each niche specifically, but
it sure would be nice to have a sitewide mailing list that
mailed all of your members.
You also have to remember that people like to stay where they
are comfortable. You know it's very annoying to start using a
new graphics program, for example. It's sometimes hard to
navigate through a site that you've never been to before. People
enjoy familiarity. If you can give this to them, you will be
more powerful and more successful.
When it comes to search engines, they like sites that have lots
of content. So why would you build one hundred sites with 1,000
pages when you could build one site with 100,000 pages? You can
quickly see the power in this setup. Why have one hundred PR 6
sites when you can have one PR 8 or PR 9.
Imagine how difficult it is to start up a new forum. Some
experts say that developing a successful forum is one of the
most difficult tasks for a webmaster. Why would you want to do
that one hundred times? You would do it just once! Even if your
music site doesn't explode your forum, chances are that a comedy
site, a fashion site, and a music site will explode your
forum....Synergy.
The next time you consider buying a domain name, think long
ahead, and think big.
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Article Source: http://www.PopularArticles.com/article4744.html |
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